David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

Cashel thought about the world he'd been taken from, feeling sad in a way that didn't often happen to him. Maybe it was the strange fashion light bent in this place. It wasall strange, and it wasn't where he belonged. He hoped that Tenoctris was all right; and he wished that Sharina was here to explain the parts of this place that she'd understand. It was wonderful the things that Sharina and Garric knew, and they talked to Cashel about them without talking down…

Beyond the tunnel mouth was a courtyard full of people in gorgeous colors, though none quite so brilliant as Bossian himself. The walls and pavement were golden-were pure gold, Cashel would've said from a distance, but close up he could see it was transparent crystal just like the rest.

Instead of shouting, the folk in the courtyard pressed up to Bossian, clasping hands with him while bowing and simpering to Kotia. Other people looked down and smiled from the balconies terraced back from the foundations of the surrounding buildings.

Bossian waved away the mob of greeters and turned to Cashel. "Does the Visitor prey on the regions you come from, sir?" he asked in a friendly enough tone. "I ask because we see portents of his return, and I thought your presence might be connected."

"What are you saying, Lord Bossian?" said Kotia in a voice that could break rocks. "Do you think that I'd have brought a harbinger of the Visitor into our world?"

"Of course not, my dear!" Bossian said, sounding like he was surprised. Maybe he was-though if he hadn't expected Kotia to go for his throat if he played games with words thatmight be insults, he didn't know her as well as Cashel did already. " I just thought we should explore whether he might be a portent, that's all."

The ground started to rise.

Cashel brought his staff over his head, the only place he could hold it crosswise and not bash a lot of people. Even so his left elbow jabbed a solid-looking fellow who caromed back with a shout of amazement. The crowd stopped chattering and stared at Cashel instead.

"Cashel?" Kotia said, calmly but with an artificially blank expression.

The ground-the plate of golden crystal, it wasn't ground!-continued to rise. One edge remained in contact with the tall, smooth-sided cone across from the gateway. The plate curved around the cone and settled into place on the opposite side, several stories higher than it'd been when Cashel first walked onto it.

"I'm sorry, mistress," Cashel said. He lowered his staff, making a little nod of apology to the fellow he'd elbowed. "I just wasn't expecting that to happen."

Then, as the locals started chattering and Bossian mouthed false regrets for not having explained what was going to happen, Cashel said, "And as for the Visitor, I've never heard of anybody who goes by that as a title. If my coming here has something to do with him, it's without me knowing about it. Who is he?"

He thought for a moment and added, "Or she, I guess."

"We'll take the Linden Walk, I think," Bossian said. He looked disconcerted. "Unless you…?"

Cashel gestured brusquely with his left hand toward the broad path bordered with what he would've called basswood trees. "Walking's fine," he said.

Cashel was tired and hungry, and Bossian seemed set on playing tricks on him. He'd have turned around and left if he had any better place to be, and he was just about ready to do that anyway.

Kotia said something sharply into Lord Bossian's ear, then stepped back and took Cashel's arm instead. "Manor Bossian's trees are famous," she said in a coolly cheerful tone. "At Manor Ansache, our parks have a prairie theme."

Her smile was as hard as Ilna's might have been. She added, "And my mother had an extensive fungus garden in the cellars, though Ansache had it grubbed up after she disappeared."

Cashel cleared his throat as they walked along the boulevard. Lord Bossian was a step ahead, talking with several locals and being very careful not to look over his shoulder. There was a little cocoon of open space separaating Cashel and Kotia from the others, which suited Cashel fine. He wasn't used to crowds. He said, "Thank you, mistress."

Kotia patted his arm with her free hand. "Is there anything you'd like to see while you're here, Master Cashel?" she said. "There's no reason that you have to rush off, you know."

Cashel noticed Lord Bossian hunch as though somebody'd just hit him on the back of the head. Grinning-Kotia was alot like Ilna, which was a fine thing if you were on her side-he said, "No, mistress, there's people waiting for me back where I was. But thank you."

He'd wondered where the fields supplying this huge building were, but he saw them as he walked along-on roofs and terraces covering the whole manor. As the tree-bordered road curved around a huge tower, Cashel noticed to the north a many-layered pyramid that seemed to be of plantings at every level.

The slopes Cashel'd hiked over for the past day weren't green enough to pasture sheep, so he wondered whether the rainfall was enough for the melons and squash he'd seen among the rows of maize. People who made courtyards move could pump water from deep wells, he supposed.

The slimly-handsome man and woman now walking to either side of Lord Bossian talked about the Visitor in airy voices. Neither of them believed he was coming-or at any rate, they denied they believed that. Bossian made neutral comments. He could've been too high-minded to trouble himself with the matter, but Cashel got the impression that Bossian was afraid to speak clearly, for fear whichever choice he made would bring the Visitor down on him.

"Ah, Kotia?" Cashel said. "Who's the Visitor? I really don't know anything about him." He paused, then added, "At least under that name."

A magnificent waterfall poured from the cleft between two towers-one rosy and decorated with turrets stuck to the sides, the other green and stark, without so much as window ledges to mark its smooth sides. The stream gurgled under the road, twisted, and vanished into a hulking silvery mass whose colonnades seemed to have been spun from cobweb. There was no sign of where so much water could have come from.

"For as far back as history records," Kotia said quietly, "a being has come down from the sky, stayed for a time, and then vanished in the same way as he appeared. We call him the Visitor. Sometimes there's a generation between his visits, sometimes longer than that. While he's here, he does as he wishes-he has that much power."

She turned to meet Cashel's eyes. Without raising her voice she added, "The Visitor remains for varying lengths of time, generally a month or a few months. About a thousand years ago, the Visitor stayed for five years. Everything that happened before then is lost to us now, because civilization ended at that time."

Cashel frowned. "You fight him when he comes?" he said.

Kotia shrugged. "Some have fought," she said. "Some flee. And there have always been some who tried to serve him. The Visitor does as he wishes."

They'd arrived at an array of tables and chairs on half-round terraces. They were set with food and drink, and servants in white tunics were poised discretely to add more.

Lord Bossian gestured Cashel and Kotia to the circular table at the lowest level. The couple who'd been walking with him took places there also, but they remained standing till Bossian gave them leave.

The male of the pair looked at Cashel and said, "Really, you mustn't get worked up about the Visitor, you know. There's always somebody talking about omens and portents and doom in the stars. It always turns out to be fancy."

"If you've looked at the night sky in the past month, Farran," Kotia said in voice that was too disgusted to be angry, "you'd have noticed that the stars themselves are different. The constellations in the southeast have changed their alignments! That's no more fancy than sunrise is."